Bride of a Bygone War [Kindle Edition] Reviewed By Dr. Wesley Britton of Bookpleasures.com

Dr. Wesley Britton

Reviewer Dr. Wesley
Britton: Dr. Britton is the author of four non-fiction books on
espionage in literature and the media. Starting in fall 2015, his new
six-book science fiction series, The Beta-Earth Chronicles, debuted
via BearManor Media. For seven years, he was co-host of online
radio’s Dave White Presents where he contributed interviews with a
host of entertainment insiders. Before his retirement in 2016, Dr.
Britton taught English at Harrisburg Area Community College. Learn
more about Dr. Britton at hisWEBSITE

In the spring of 1981,
intelligence officer Walter Lukash returns to Lebanon after a five
year absence. He thinks he’s on a short two month mission. His
assignment is to liaison with the Phalange militia, an organization
allegedly working against the Syrian occupying army during the heated
civil war in Lebanon. However, Lukash quickly learns he might have
big problems as he’s told the two-month tour of duty will actually
be a two year stint. He had hoped he could do his duty and leave the
country before being forced to face the wife he abandoned in Lebanon
five years before. Back then, he was using a cover name of a
non-existent businessman. Now, he knows there’s no way he can avoid
being discovered by his wife, or her vengeful family, during a longer
stay in the war-torn country. In addition, while the agency doesn’t
know about the unauthorized marriage, they are aware that his most
recent lover, the widow of a terrorist suspect, is on his trail and
jeopardizing his career. The agency tells him to break off the
affair; he won’t do it. Instead, Lukash, a man who has dodged
making decisions and cleaning up his own messes, is now forced to
face the consequences of his actions while completely misreading what
his Phalange contacts are arranging.

While Bride is the second
book in Fleming’s Beirut Trilogy, it’s actually a prequel to
Dynamite Fisherman, a novel featuring another intelligence officer,
Conrad Prosser, who has a major supporting role in Bride. Both books
share the same harsh backdrop, a city where the “morning broadcasts
always carried a complete listing of the hot spots that Beirut's
morning commuters should avoid if they wished to escape sniping,
shelling, kidnapping, car bombs, and other local hazards.” However,
Fishermen is more successful at capturing this terrain in a more
vibrant, fast-paced, and descriptive story.

Bride is a more disjointed
account with an often two-dimensional protagonist. The more serious
plot, of an attempt by would-be allies to draw the U.S. into an all
out war with Syria, is often pushed to the background while Lukash
tries to hide his amours from headquarters. He’s saved from his
wife’s family several times due to luck rather than to his own
actions or initiative. He has dreams about a woman who looks like his
wife who has a child he eventually saves from a check-point arrest,
but what has this to do with anything else in the novel? It’s one
scene allowing Lukash to be heroic, but we need to see this courage
when he encounters the family he wronged five years previously.
Instead, others take care of his problems when he’s not around.

This isn’t to say Lukash
doesn’t have his moments. In the most intense episode, when he
learns of the trap his contacts have arranged for him, he shows both
resourcefulness and human decency in rescuing a compatriot others
might have left for dead. Still, as a whole, Dynamite Fisherman is a
more fleshed-out experience with more depth and detail. Bride is
readable, believable, and perhaps only suffers in comparison with its
sequential follow-up. I’m looking forward to part three as Preston
Fleming does know how to spin a yarn. Even when he’s not at the top
of his game, his fiction has more verisimilitude than many others in
this genre.